


storms won't wash Me away from You

by stickynote_chan



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: 1 year after Music Fest and Captain HardRock, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, I just wanted to get this out here, No Beta We Die as Men, Spirits, Spiritual, Spiritually Connected Marinette, Warning: Marinette gets sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 01:23:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickynote_chan/pseuds/stickynote_chan
Summary: And, because it was Luka, because music is him as much as design is her, it also feels like a song of gentle rain against her skin, the rumble of distant thunder. The cheerful giggle of river’s kiss as water played around her submerged ankles.--Meeting someone can feel like fate, like destiny. Luka Couffaine is not written into Marinette's fate. The Spirits aren't that cruel.





	storms won't wash Me away from You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RenderedReversed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenderedReversed/gifts).

> Once again, to RenderedReversed.
> 
> I feel like there's a major style difference between Gentle and storms, I'm blaming the change in music from hard metal to progressive. Also, the fact that Marinette isn't as scared of being not human in here and more vindictively angry that the spirits have changed her just because of 'destiny'.

Meeting Luka wasn't the same as meeting Tikki or Chat Noir, where it had felt like destiny aligned. Like the world was conniving the plot of her life. Written it into her very atoms; the ‘this, this,  _ this _ ’ was the inciting plot of her life. Like her first fourteen years as Marinette were the exposition rushing towards this singular point in time, a backstory explained in footnotes until she could become Ladybug and begin the main events. Saviour of Paris. Wielder of the Ladybug Miraculous. Important.

No, meeting Luka isn't like the convergence of Push and Pull. Like the weight of a millennia in waiting.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks when they're sitting side by side in the Couffaine's greenhouse-like area. It’s a week after the second ever Music Festival and Juleka had offered her place as a hangout.

The others are upstairs playing an increasingly volatile series of ping pong matches. Alya is winning, Nino is  _ not _ .

Marinette had declined their offer to be referee (she is not allowed to play ping pong ever again, not after the Great Disaster No. 8), saying she wanted to enjoy the weirdly spicy tea Captain Couffaine had recently acquired, and when they questioned, 'By yourself?', Luka had wordlessly plopped down next to her on the long white couch.

They had shuffled away with smirks, not so quiet  _ ooh _ ’s and so much wiggly eyebrows that she’d been left behind flushing as red, as bright, as  _ glaring _ as neon lights.

They’re not doing anything but enjoying their tea! Well, she is. Luka, on the other hand, had coughed up a lung trying to drink a single mouthful and was now content to just keep her company and far, far away from the beverage. It’s adorable.

Currently, he has his hands clasped around his guitar like he doesn't know what to do with his fingers when they're not making music. He's playing  _ Unicorn Party _ (one of Rose’s best song) but slowly like he's savouring each bar and it sounds almost strangely country with his unplugged guitar and without banging drums.

"Can't you hear it in my heart?" she offers back.

"Possibly," he answers with a grin she can’t help but return. "Just a little bit; maybe something like  _ this _ ," he plays a series of chords and they sound like the rasp of a new wind, leaves swirling, gentle and light.

When she laughs and nods, he looks pleased. Half-lidded eyes shining over his smile and dimples. It was a mistake to introduce him to eyeliner. They make his eyes shine brighter.

She bumps her shoulder into his and teases, “If you can hear it, why ask?”

"Because your words are beautiful,” he says so  _ casually _ as if he hadn’t brushed away her breath with that alone.

“What?” she says, a little disbelieving, a little enamoured.

Because who else beyond Luka could  _ casually _ say that the stuttering, panic-driven words Marinette spews were beautiful?

But no, she realises a beat later, it wasn’t casual at all.

It’s not  _ casually _ when he spins his ring, taps out a rhythm on his guitar with freshly repainted black nails and says, voice hushed, “The way you express your thoughts are beautiful, Marinette. They’re lyrics I can’t get out of my head.”

And it’s definitely not  _ casually  _ when his eyes mirror the  _ burning _ in hers.

A minute, give her a minute, please, to take back her breath.

Her mind’s all jumbled up and she has to  _ think _ about what to say in response, how she can diverge, diverge, diverge. It’s not right, it’s not right at all, that in the face of his sincerity, there only laid the desperate contemplation of a girl used to keeping secrets and secret identities.

She wants to bare her teeth at the Spirits for turning her this way, that their millennium-in-the-waiting plot devolved into making her a liar to her parents, to her friends, to this boy in front of her. But more than that, she wants to cry to the world, mourn the way her thoughts tracks have changed, almost irreparably, grieve for the way her mind will now always stop at lies and misdirections first before anything else.

She wants her heart to stop contemplating acceptable lies as  _ priority _ and saying the truth like a  _ last resort _ .

Ladybug is supposed to be a role model of good, a champion of righteousness, a mascot for all of Paris to follow in the footsteps of. A bastion of hope against evil. Marinette can’t summon the thought of being anything else but a liar, worse than Lila.

But Luka only continues to piece together the airy song in her heart, patiently waiting for her as she cycles through five generic answers, topic changers, outright deception. None of them sits right, they never do, but this time the acrid taste refuses to fade. They’re bitter rot stuck to the back of her gums.

And then he changes the song because, of course, he does, he can hear her heart like no other, and he plays like he’s painting the changing of seasons. It's the beauty of Winter turning to Spring; of Summer into Autumn. It’s supposed to be the sound of her heart and he makes it resonate like the bloom of flowers, the expense of blue skies, the fall of leaves, the first snow.

He doesn’t deserve this.

So she rolls her tongue through a blistering tang of fear and blurts out, "You." Her heart's in her throat but she’s Ladybug, she’s  _ Marinette _ , and she can be brave enough to keep barreling forward even when it’s her own spiralling mind that’s tripping over her; she can be brave enough for this boy. Her heart’s in her throat but it's not enough to keep her from confirming, "I was thinking about you."

She’s left with the aftertaste that’s a little like the tea she's holding; spicy, unexpected, and no less perfect for it. The truth washes over her like the cleanse of a confession. There’s still fear boiling around her throat begging her to  _ deny _ but she doesn't want to take these few precious words back, doesn’t want to give in to the stupid voice in her head urging her to hide. She  _ doesn’t _ , not with the look he's giving her.

The chord he’s playing splinters off sharply and he stares at her with wide, wide eyes. He looks so caught off guard then so unbearably pleased, it's almost intoxicating. He's blushing when he breathes out, " _ Oh _ , really?"

He plays a few rapid, plucky notes and it sounds like,  _ 'Wow. _ '

“Y-Yeah.” She smiles at him, blushing as hard as he is, and he clears his throat.

"What are you… What about me?" he asks her with both his voice and his guitar. Shaky, like he might just stop processing at any moment.

"About- About meeting you, at last year’s Music Festival, our conversation then, and how…” she stops, shudders around the words; anxiousness crawls back to her like a malevolent pet. After doing so  _ well _ , after being so  _ good _ at speaking for once. She pushes it away and tries again, “How it doesn't feel like destiny a-and…" and trials off, the words now completely stuck in her head, grinding to a halt, unable to move past her trembling jaw, trembling lips, trembling soul.

She tries to summon the will, the power, that bravery, to express how meeting Luka… How it feels like the sight of sunset after a sleepless night and a restless day. A gentle reassurance to rest, that it was  _ okay _ to rest, to let her eyes drop and mind quiet. The enveloping hug of warm blankets and soft, handmade quilts as night finally falls. The taste of darkness that lulls the hungry  _ noise _ into silence.

And, because it was Luka, because music is him as much as design is her, it also feels like a song of gentle rain against her skin, the rumble of distant thunder. The cheerful giggle of river’s kiss as water played around her submerged ankles.

The sigh as she traces every hidden worry etched into her ribs, lets them sit in her mind like a broken choir. But only for a moment, only for a brief acknowledgement. The final exhalation when she can, at long last, release them to drift away to sleep in the gentle symphony of the stars. The quiet as she slips into a dreamless sleep, easy as breathing.

She doesn't know how to say all of that though. An earthquake of  _ what if _ s starts at the forefront of her mind: what if she sounds like weird, what if he misinterprets,  _ what if _ -

So she scrunches up her face, contemplating a misdirection, a lie in a riddle, something to change the topic. 

"You don’t have to feel pressured to answer," he says, quietly, and she stops thinking of fear, of running. It’s unfair how quickly he can mellow the storm in her heart with only a run of notes that whisper ' _ I accept' _ and ' _ Don't worry _ ' and  _ ‘Marinette’ _ .

She turns to him and she’s not surprised that he’s already looking at her, probably never looked anywhere else and  _ what a thought. _

They're less than half a metre apart now, it seems like they’re forever leaning towards each other, drawn to the journey they can see in each other’s breath. She stares into his miracle blue eyes and, in them, she sees a stream, a flow so peaceful she hears only silence that accepts.

His breath stutters and his cheeks are red but his eyes don't leave hers for a second, searching in her gaze as deeply as she does his. He makes her feel so,  _ so _ bold.

And so, her heart demands honesty for him.

"You're the hush of dusk after a busy day,” she whispers, letting the words hang in the closing the space between them. Intimate. “The quiet I needed but never expected. You're the freedom of life unplanned; the making of each step forward with my own designs. Meeting you isn’t destiny planned in a sketchbook, it’s the spontaneity of random cut, the difference between I  _ will _ and I  _ can _ . Meeting you was a thousand coincidences. Continuing to meet you, Luka Couffaine, is the choice  _ I’ll _ make every day.”

She’s surprised she’s still alive after saying all that. She was sure she’d combust with how hot her face feels.

“See?” he says like a prophecy, his cheeks bright red. “Lyrics I can’t get out of my head.”

He reaches up and tucks a lock of hair behind her ears, lets his cool fingers brush against her neck, palm hot against her cheeks. Hand lingering.

“ _ Beautiful _ ,” he murmurs, as they stare at each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Google Docs title- "ml: trying not to write destiny like there's no free will"
> 
> Come to my new [ML Tumblr](https://stickynotechan.tumblr.com/) for a chat :)


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